is this really inspired by blood, because it feels like it plagiarizes its aesthetics and not much more. blood has a very fresh and unique arsenal: flare gun, vodoo doll, spray can that works as flamethrower, tesla cannon... cultic has an arsenal of bullet weapons: pistol, rifle, shotgun, rifle again... and it lacks just as much in enemy variety. cultists in this game are easy fodder and again come off as a low quality imitation of blood's iconic enemies; the pistol ones may shoot you from afar if you initiate but it's still quite different. other than that there's a few bulkier sponges acting as bosses or minibosses and not much more. level design interchanges between corridors and open field areas, but excels at neither.

also it looks like shit, worse than the games that influenced it. not because pixel graphics but because it's just a superficial attempt to copy their overall look, unlike the old games themselves where people were trying to make it look as good as possible against the hardware limitations.

melee plays like shit too, there's no fun in throwing hatches with how little damage they do. throwing dynamite is again just another reminder i wish i were playing the game that does it better. and what the fuck do you need a dash for lol

just play dusk if you want something actually inspired that also has its own vision

Super lineal, which is the opposite I look for in a metroidvania. Has about 6 areas that you have to beat sequentially, needing to clear the boss before moving on. Map design offers the bare minimum, some connections here and there but most stuff is self contained and again, barely makes use of the metroidvania format. There's a few notable unlocks, but you get them all pretty early.

Combat is centered around the time stop / grazing mechanics it introduces, which are a nice gimmick in the beginning, but later become tedious because of how much the gameplay is dependent on them, and how little variety there is outside of it. Variations of how time stop affects enemies later in the game does not suffice to make it more interesting, but rather has the opposite effect of making it more convoluted.

Boss fights are the most serviceable part of the game, but it's not worth playing through just for them. Perhaps better to rid yourself of the metroidvania convictions despite the game's claims of "heavy emphasis on exploration" and think of it as a platformer, but it even accepting its linearity, it's still underwhelming to go through the maps and rooms.

The scoring system is a great improvement form devil daggers. It increases when you kill, and decreases over time. The higher the score, the more enemies will appear. In DD, the waves of enemies were locked behind staying alive for some time, but in Hyper Demon you can ramp up the action very fast if you know what you're doing. There's a lot less grind. Likewise, the game will not throw everything at you if you're having trouble. It still has the small problem of games feeling the same at the beginning, but they're not as dragged out now.

It also adds tutorials, which is appreciated. Go through them once and you know everything there is to know, you have all the tools for beating the game. Whilst with DD I had to look up mechanics in order to know how you're expected to play.

Visuals and sound are aggressive and flashy but they seem more of a hindrance to playing than they actually are. It's not long until you are used to them. Plus, flashes and sound cues are used to warn about enemy attacks, always giving you a chance to dodge; and your dodge slows down time for a bit so you can focus. Usually for me deaths were from being swarmed, by not being fully aware of what was around me, or by failing to kill enough stuff that it overwhelms you.

I wish they had added a bit more to the formula, this feels like a 2.0 of devil daggers which is fine as it does everything better, but I also feel it doesn't do much new.

gore, 2d sprites and an overall direction inspired by older games don't salvage mediocre gameplay. all levels, corridors, arenas end up looking the same, there's too many weapons considering you won't use half of them, and the enemies are bland, sparsely placed and if they shoot projectiles won't really move or go after you. only in arenas there is some semblance of fun. if you want to be a good doom clone you need to consider the many nuances that make it work and not just mimic it superficially, while also lacking and identity of your own. it's too derivative to the point where everything can be traced back elsewhere. and sure doom, blood, quake... are old games, but those looking for more of that experience are better off playing custom WADs than a game that just does the same but worse.

while it tries to play as a mixture of melee combat and bullet hell, the swordfighting is dull, always the same "combo" of pressing the button four times in a row, or using a charged attack. it's bland but it's also slow: most enemies will start blocking your attacks if hit enough, and will gain invulnerability when knocked down. should be noted that any flashy attacks are animations that play after hitting the enemy enough with your normal attacks. good for an action game that the stuff you can watch is better than what you can perform in-game. anyway, most of the windows for hitting foes come from parrying them, and while most games manage to make parries a satisfying mechanic, the only challenge here comes from some attack animations being clunky, and that the fights are long and drawn-out, so it's more of a test of patience to parry the same 5 chain attack so that you can retaliate.

in short, it's a better idea to use your charged shot most of the time, instead of chasing down an AI that will sometimes run away indefinitely if you keep chasing it after hitting it for a while, because it's trying to do a projectile attack but it can't have you being aggressive. this just shows how the pacing of fights in this game is never up to you, and is only intended to be played with a specific approach. even when it leans into the bullet hell segments, bosses will often be invulnerable during them, and instead have you shoot the bullets that they fire to block them, essentially yet another "wait through all these attacks until you can damage the boss again". it also seems to me that the more the fights lean into projectile dodging aspect, the shittier they are. the line fight is another test of patience not in a good way; fighting against the burst is just running after them 90% of the time...

all in all i find the shooting is also mediocre, and shares many of the faults of melee combat because they are more problems of the game itself, combat is dry, for a game centered around boss fights, half of the rooster is extremely forgettable and rarely adds something that makes it feel different, and you often have to wait your turn in the fight which goes on for longer than it should.

Bayo 2 improves a lot of lackluster aspects that 1 had: the gimmick levels are actually fun; not held up with as many QTEs; instead of standing around during most giant bossfights, you fight them flying now. Your arsenal is fun & diverse instead of being clogged by reskins and downgrades, and you have panther within from the start for more fluidity.

You can also start on hard from the beginning, useful since the game is also twice as trivial as the first one. Umbran Climax (just like Witch Time) is a "press this to get free attacks" button. It makes torture attacks obsolete (a waste of magic) and the enemies being designed around this mechanic means they are much more prone to blocking and less susceptible to regular fighting, encouraging spamming UC as much as possible. Just compare fighting Grace and Glory in bayonetta 1 and 2. I don't think it's very fun; it's just a button mashing mode where any attack has WW and hyper armor and there's no need to focus on combos, positioning...

It seems more shallow, easier in general. I had a harder time playing 1 on normal than 2 in hard, and I didn't even die once because the game showers you with heals. It's much more smooth as an experience but it feels part of it was also removing any challenge in order to go through the game steadily. However, I see myself replaying it one day without many gripes, unlike with 1.